Jennifer Cope has been keeping her new amphibian habitat wet in an area of Denman’s boggy woods. Recently she found a Long-toed salamander in residence and took the salamander’s photo! Note that very long 4th toe, the relatively chunky body and the yellow stripe! Great!

DCA lands are vibrant in spring with both colourful singers and flowering plants. The neotropical migrant Orange-crowned warblers travel up the coast from wintering homes in the southern USA and Mexico just to have a nest home here on Denman! The brushy woodland edges are their habitats, but the guys still get up on the tops of young […]

Spring bird Count on Sunday 30th April was very fun and interesting with 67 species seen. Just three of us went right over to Tree (on the map – Sandy) Island and in the end were out for 12 hours. A couple of highlights were the Western tanager – Denman’s prettiest bird, often difficult to […]

Despite the threat of rain 40 people turned out on Saturday morning 12 November to hear Andy MacKinnon describe the fascinating life histories of forest fungi. After the walk, folks gathered at the Denman Hall as Andy identified over 80 species of fungi from Denman, collected as part of this one time scientific inventory. Please […]

What Are the Differences? Pacific Treefrog (Chorus Frog) bumpy skin (may be fairly smooth), nose to shoulder black stripe (mask), may have other black spots, lines, usually creamy belly, no longitudinal body fold, toe pads on long slender toes, little webbing, length up to 5cm, can leap but usually hop or climb, distinctive voice and […]

Red-legged frogs are at Frog Fest too! Not noisy like tree/chorus frogs… But red-legged frogs are rare! No cute little toe pads… But can jump like decent frogs! Rana aurora – special name! Special to this part of the world! Frog Fest – Opening April 29th more…..

An attractive western pine elfin butterfly was seen on April 7th, actively flying in the DCA Butterfly Reserve during this interesting April heat-wave. These small butterflies do seem to “magically appear”, true to their elfin name, dancing around trees and shrubs. Pine trees are important in the habitat as the little green stripy elfin caterpillars […]

Recent monitoring of Dense-flowered cordgrass Spartina densiflora, the invasive marine grass from South America, demonstrated that the manual removal from Denman shores continues to be successful. While there were new seedlings regenerating, the numbers have declined by 100’s to 1000’s in many sites where two full growing seasons post-removal can be compared. New seedlings were expected […]